Life has been slow and mostly uneventful, yet rather awesome, for the past few weeks. Yay awesome!
Tyler made awesome dinner today… chicken with some really tasty sauce, yummy rice, and homemade bread pudding. Tasty.
Greg and I went downtown today to randomly photograph (and because I needed a new lens cap for my camera). Downtown is really nice to shoot in… other people should come with us next time!
I probably should have updated yesterday. Meh.
My first two days of work were mostly uneventful. I haven’t really done much beyond the basic training and learning about the systems.
I’m going to be working on CoMotion, the infrastructure that powers basically everything that Viz does, so I’ve spent some time reading over the documentation of the software. I hope I’ll get to start poking around the code soon. They use Preforce for source control, which will be a little weird to get used to, but it seems kinda awesome.
The environment is really weird… since Viz was originally a part of Maya and then was bought by General Dynamics and integrated into its C4 Systems department, it has the feel of a very small startup where everyone is friendly and approachable, but there are huge hurdles to even the most basic things that make you realize it’s part of a huge, scary corporation.
For example, I needed to install the Java Development Kit and an IDE today, but I don’t have admin rights to my computer. I had to fill out a 4 page form that will get reviewed by my manager and his boss and his boss and the IT department at GD before I will get those rights. In the meantime, I had to call the corporate helpdesk and convince them to install the software for me. What a pain.
Besides work, not much has been happening. I really should work more on Student Wars, but between work and certain personal commitments, I have no time to do much of anything else. Maybe this weekend.
Alisa, Greg, and I went photoing yesterday.
Schedulewanking is in progress.
I kinda like this schedule (15397 is Pen Based Computing–writing apps for tablet PCs–not webapps [TCPulse has it wrong because they overloaded the course number]). However, despite taking databases pass/fail, it might still be a little too much, given that I’m taking OS. I dunno. Also, I’m still not sure if I want to take photo or not, but I don’t know what I’d take in its place. This is also okay, except I think 51 units is too much with OS.
Life is generally happy, despite having its blah moments. I failed the graph theory exam part 1 on Monday, and am likely going to fail more on the part tomorrow (the proof portion). Why do I suck so much at graph theory?
Also, I found out I didn’t get the job with Maya. Waiting to hear back from General Dynamics. Eh. If I don’t get this, I won’t have a job this summer and I’ll likely end up travelling instead, which still isn’t all that bad. Whee.
Relationship foo is going well, I think. At least, it’s going well from my standpoint.
Friends are still full of awesome and win.
I printed some 30″ X 30″ photo prints (not digital outputs from a large printer) on Monday. It’s kinda awesome. Exposing the paper is a pain, and then developing it and fixing it and such is also a pain. Carrying it places is an even bigger pain, since it’s photo paper, and I imagine rolling it too tightly is bad for it since it’ll crack and whatnot.
Giant Vincent piccar, ahhh (next to me and some 8X10 prints for scale)!
I think I’ve generally stopped caring about photos for Portrait class though. I got a B on my last assignment (the stuff of Car and Tom) despite my trying hard to get things just right, so I’m basically not going to try anymore. I can’t do any better than a B in the class anyway (currently have a low B), so why put forth the effort when it’s only going to frustrate me more and make me hate photography again?
…
I wonder why I’m still wanting to take Black and White II next semester, given that.
Blahhh.
I hate my portrait class with a passion, despite having awesome things such as huge 30X30 Vincents. If it wasn’t for the fact that there’s only this assignment (big portraits) and one more (platinum prints) left, I would drop the class. I figure I’ll suffer through a couple more assignments and be done.
Talked to Ev on the phone today. It was nice catching up, I suppose. I wish we talked more often, but meh.
Last night was the screening of “Paris je t’aime” that I had to go to for photo history class. Took Greg along, and he seemed to enjoy it. It was one of the most unique film experiences I’ve ever had, with short 5-minute clips ranging from the sad (a mother reminising about her dead son), unique (Elijah Wood as a vampire!), funny (mimes in love), and touching (a blind man remembering his relationship with an actress), all set in Paris.
Now is graph theory studying time, so I don’t fail as badly tomorrow. Wheeeeee.
Edit: Better:
I had an interesting dream last night but, as dreams are wont to do, it has mostly faded away. I do remember a few details though…
It took place during and after an alien attack on Earth, where they were trying to wipe out human life and take over the planet. It started out as being me watching a movie on TV (with Apphia and Tim), and then I was actually in the movie as one of the characters (the son of the primary hero). My dad flew space fighters, and toward the end, he embarked on a daring and dangerous mission to sabotage the aliens’ primary base in space. What was left of the government did a good job of covering up, making announcements that he had died and everything (since apparently the aliens were watching him closely because they were afraid of him… I don’t know why they didn’t just kill him).
Also, their method of killing humans was to selectively release some kind of gas that would incapacitate people. I was in an apartment (our apartment in the movie, I think), rummaging through the clutter and rubble to find food, and then the TV turned to static and the voice was distorted to announce that the aliens were going to attack the building I was in (except for rooms with bunk beds, because they wanted to spare families with small children) in 4 seconds. I run to my mother, and she looks around wildly. Now, understand that the way to survive one of these attacks is to start breathing water/liquid, because apparently filling your lungs with liquid prevents the gas from affecting you (and apparently you don’t drown if you do that… O.o). The only thing she could find was a ballpoint pen, so she pulled off the end and stuck it up my nose right before the gas hit and I fell unconcious.
When I woke up again, there was a nurse tending to my mom (yay for medical personell still being around!) and telling me she would be fine. There were suddenly a bunch of other people around as well, all trying to steal the apple I had in my hand. Then Mike came running in (mdc1) armed with a sword that kept breaking into smaller and less effectual pieces, charging through the people toward me. I grabbed a sword (hey look, now with convenient Insta-appear©) and joined him and he stopped, saying he thought I had been captured and was coming to free me and my mom.
I think it was about then that I woke up, so I never did get to find out if my dad managed to destroy them or not.
On a related note, I did some random portraits of Mike (and a few other people) yesterday.
I bought the 70-300mm lens from Alex today… and oh god, it is pure sex and awesome to shoot with. The depth of field you get at 300mm is amazing, as is being able to stand by the tennis courts and photograph people sitting on the Fence.
I’ll try to be less image-spammy today…
…
Only at CMU:
You can see all the pictures at photos2
Also today was darkrooming with ghannema. Managed to print 4 very nice portraits of mgarlan, mdc1, ehohenst, and dmgordon. Yay for my love of photo returning (although tomorrow morning’s crit will probably kill it again for a while).
So behind on other homework, ahhh.
I need to do less photography.